Turbo2

Whilst most other public-sector organisations seem to have been utterly useless during the recent bad weather, I think it is time we congratulated the Met Office and the various TV broadcasters for getting their forecasts pretty much spot on. They get plenty of stick for getting it wrong, but this time they have been right on the money.

We were all forewarned of the cold snap approaching way back on Tuesday 27 January, with the anticipated snow falls to start on Sunday 1 February. They got this exactly right. Each day since then, they have been unerringly accurate with their snow forecasts across each region, with regards to both location and timing.

This beggars the question of why the various other authorities who govern our lives were so caught-out and ill-prepared for the event. Take the gritters for example: one fatigued gritter driver interviewed on the TV the other day was bemoaning the lack of remaining salt stocks at his depot and promptly explained this away by telling us that his team had been out gritting the roads every night since 1st December. What on earth for? We haven't had sub-zero temperatures every night since 1st December, so why waste the salt when you don't need to? Do they just feel that they have to look like their earning their, umm, "salt" so-to-speak, by driving around every night irrespective of road conditions?

Anyway I digress: it's a big pat on the back for the Met Office from me

Leslie

Yes I agree.

Les

Spoon

Do people actually even take notice anymore though? So many times weather forecasts have been wrong and so personally if I go out with a T-shirt/shorts/sunglasses/suncream/jumper/jacket/raincoat/umbrella/boots/gloves/scarf/hat/ shovel/food/flask/ blanket/torch/mobile/ in the vehicle, I always get it right.

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

Yup, they've been doing this by us. At the end of last year we had a pathetic tiny snowfall. Didn't cause any disruption as it melted pretty pretty quick, but what did they do? They gritted ALL the RESIDENTIAL roads in the area! What a waste!

And gritted all the main roads when they had a sniff of cold.

So what happened last week? Well, I was out at 5am on Monday last week and the only roads that were gritted were the motorways. And of course, this time round they didn't have enough grit. So now residential road aren't gritted and feejits end up crashing as they drive down under the roads impression that they are.

I know why it is; All the boroughs have a quota of expected consumption and costs for each year. If they don't use their quota, they get less funds for grit the next year, and so forth. So rather than stock piling excess from the previous year, they aimlessly spread out on the roads at any excuse to make sure they get enough funding for next year's grit. Good idea, until the roads really do need gritting

And another thing, why don't bus operators keep snow tyres mounted on wheels ready to swap over on the night of heavy/expected snowfall/ice?

Klaatu

Get it right...errmmm...once in a while, rewarded with a pat of the back? Pah!

jimmyv

Following on from my earlier thread, Well i wasn't impressed with their predictions for last Friday/Saturday, which were pretty far off as far as i was concerned, they claimed an 80% chance of a severe weather event which turned out to consist of some drizzle on the motorway. personally couldn't see what the fuss was about and made it down south and back very easily.
I don't want to take anything away from them, however i have since stopped attention to them most of the time.

scunnered

iTrader: (1)

My local council normally have an allocation of 60K tons of salt per year. This year they expect to use 80K tons.
I reckon they could very easily get away with using a fraction of this if they used a bit of intelligence.
They first started salting the roads here this winter on 28th Oct, it was a nice sunny day, but the weather forecast said 0°C for that night. Anyway, the roads were totally dry as it hadn't rained for days. No chance of ice on the road, but they put the salt down anyway.
The salt just absorbs the moisture in the air, making the roads wet dirty and greasy. So for the next 11 days in a row, they had to salt the road every day until it rained.
Also, when the roads are really bad, they don't send the gritters out as its too dangerous.
Basically they only seem to salt the roads when they don't really need to, and they don't salt them when they do need to.
Being a motorcyclist as well as a car driver, I tend to look at road conditions with a lot more scrutiny than just a car driver would.

RA Dunk

statistics say if you keep on guessing you`ll get it right at some point

tanyatriangles

iTrader: (2)

Met-office=waste of space and money.

Wrong forecasts for our region 99% of the time: eg: says it will be dry all day here, it's raining NOW

And don't even get me started on so called met-office trained weather girls on TV who talk about "the summer equinox" grrrrrr!

E-mailed the met-office once to complain that the previous day they had forecast dry for the next day, then they changed it.....as it started to rain!
They said, that that was OK.

jimmyv

too true...